This invention relates to a financial data processing system and a method of operating that system for keeping accounts of loans, loan histories, leases, and pertinent information relevant to each loan and each lease.
Prior to the invention described below, financial information was maintained primarily by handwritten bookkeeping entries. Ledger cards had been used for keeping account of each loan, including information concerning the debtor, information concerning the repayment of each loan, and information concerning attempts, when necessary, to notify and inquire of the debtor in the event that his loan repayments had been delinquent. With the advent of computerized data processing apparatus, many of the aforementioned financial tasks have been facilitated by entering some of the financial data mentioned above into computerized data banks from which that data may be readily retrieved. However, in many systems, hard copies (i.e. printed documents) of each loan transaction, loan history and updated information had been used to keep account of each loan. Furthermore, although individual systems have been developed and have been used to implement individual ones of the various operations that are used for financial loan accounts, there has been no suggestion prior to the instant invention of integrating all of these individual operations and functions into a single centralized system. For example, the processing and history of loan payments might be implemented in a data processing system, but that system is not useful with another system by which lease processing and accounts are maintained. Similarly, histories and details of collections and attempts to collect loans generally have not been stored in electronic data processing systems. Rather, such information relating to loan collections usually is stored in the form of "hard copy" of paper documents.
Still further, some data processing systems which have been used to process and keep account of various loans are not of the so-called "real-time" or on-line systems. Rather, such prior systems process information that is gathered during the day in a so-called "batch" mode during off hours. Consequently, neither a customer (or debtor) nor an operator of the data processing system would be aware of two or more transactions that are made by that customer during a day.
One example of a prior art system which suffers from the disadvantages mentioned above and which is not operable to integrate all of the desired financial loan processing and accounting functions is the CLASS system which had been developed for FinanceAmerica Corporation of Allentown, Pa.